Dust to Dust
by Ayogg
Summary: At age ten, Ash Ketchum is forcibly taken from his home and sold into the Kanto Academy. From there, a life as gladiator and soldier inevitably await. But promises of fortune and glory are meaningless when the price is slavery, and a true pokemon master must first be master of his own destiny. Rated M for language and potentially, graphic violence, not for sexual content.
1. Prologue

Johann Kabuto was not a pleasant man, but he was an efficient one, and did not shirk from unpleasant tasks. He was fair haired and very tall, with a beak-nose, long face, and lean, lengthy arms that made him look as if he'd been violently stretched at birth. All features that made him stick out among the generally darker haired, shorter people who lived in the western plains, beyond the Viridian Wildlands, on the frontier of Kanto.

He did not blend.

He rode ahead of his three companions, weathered hands holding the reigns loosely as his Rapidash pounded the earth beneath him. It was just past the height of summer but neither Johann nor his fire pokémon noticed, though sweat darkened the sides oh his wide-brimmed hat and dust began to mar his horse's snow white flanks. Every so often he would crook his head slightly to ensure his companions were still following, relishing his solitude but careful never to ride too far ahead. While he was an adequate hand with a pokéball and Rapidash had certainly assisted through the many hazards of life in the semi-wild, Route One was poorly traveled these days and the risk of running into a flock of feral Fearow or an Arbok nest were not insignificant – it was why he had three Hikers with him in the first place, no doubt cursing his admittedly excessive pace as they trailed behind on rented Ponyta.

But he did love the wilderness. With a grunt of "Gah!" he kicked his heels and set off at a gallop as he raced forward, the summit of the final hillside in view.

The group of four stopped at the crest, looking down into the valley falling gently below, filling the narrow space between the Silver Foothills and the sea. Pallet Town. It was late now, the Hikers had caught up and insisted on refreshing themselves and their pokémon before going into town. Johann squinted towards the sun, it was well into the afternoon – though this far south there was more than enough time to continue into town. Johann smiled, a look that did not suit the naturally dour man in the slightest. This though, this he enjoyed – watching the Hikers' Gravelers and Primeapes grappling on the hillside. His work as a League Collector didn't leave much time for hobbies or travel – it had been years since he'd been to one of the great Coliseums in Saffron or Celadon or Cinnabar, or even a caught a Circuit Match in Viridian. But men like himself were barely contained violence by nature and of nature - perhaps that's why he loved the provinces, the dangers here were greater than any caged battled. Reflections were lost when one of the Graveler landed a particular nasty looking hook right in a Primeape's snout; he shook his head – this was not the place for fond recollection or introspection, however much he might sometimes wish it were.

"Pokémon away boys, save it for if we get real trouble," Johann interrupted the murderous 'sparring' session. The Hikers grumbled under their breaths, but they recalled their pokémon quick enough to suit. As they did so, he gave a grunt of satisfaction and turned back around, idly patting the flanks of Rapidash and readjusting the saddle for the remainder of the trip. He hoisted himself up, taking a final moment to appreciate the sight before him.

He only came this far into the backwaters once a year, and despite being a town of no particular import, their was a beauty in Pallet's summer sunsets rolling down the hills across the impeccably blue seas and white sands of its coast – it was a sight he remembered fondly, about the only part of this trip that he routinely did. It was a shame he couldn't simply set up camp here and have the villagers come to him, instead of spending the evening in a second-rate inn of a third-rate hamlet.

"We going in tonight, Boss?" The largest and leader of the Hikers, a brute who had introduced himself in Viridian as 'Fatback' asked. "We usually like to wait, me and the boys. Best to go into town at sunrise before work starts and everyone spreads out. Less chance for trouble that way."

Johann looked at him – Fatback lived up to his name: he was enormous with a round face full of bristling sideburns and a thinning beard; and giant, barrel shaped arms and legs. No neck. He looked even absurd, sitting on top of his tiny Ponyta. He was oddly comfortable on horseback for such a large man and though he'd never make a recruiting poster, Johann suspected he'd done service in the Rhyhorn Corps before becoming a Hiker.

"I'm afraid we must continue forth. I have business in town that I needs to be taken care of before tomorrow's assembly. Pallet Town has never given us problems, it won't now."

"If you say, boss..." Fatback trailed off skeptically. At Johann's look of impatience, he continued with an enormous shrug. "Times are getting tougher, is all. Locals might not be happy to see us. They wasn't last time we stopped by."

Johann snorted. "They're _never_ happy to see the likes of us. But I've got a job, and I'll damn well do it. And _your_ job is to make sure I can do _my_ job. So you do that."

"No problems, Boss," Fatback replied immediately, arms raised slightly in a token gesture of surrender. "Me and the boys ain't failed a job yet. Just asking a question is all."

Johann nodded. "Let's go." He hadn't made any sort of small talk with the Hikers since settling payment back in Viridian, but curiosity got the better of him. "You've spent time in Pallet, then? Hardly seems like your type of place."

Fatback snorted. "Piece of shit is what it is. Last coupla years I've Hiked this damned Route more times a year than I can count, and nothing worth a Rattata's shrunken testicles along the whole of it." Then he shrugged, "Beats life as a civ though. Chop my own dick off with a Pincer if that was how I was gonna end my days,"

Johann nodded, a little crude but his mirroring his own sentiments, less the castration-by-giant-insect . "We're off then," Johann grunted, nudging Rapidash and setting off down the final slope into Pallet. The other three followed, the wilderness soon giving way to maintained fields and the occasional orchard, less bursting than they should be so late in season, before these too ended at a rough dirt road and stout stone wall that marked the boundary of the town.

Their entry did not go unnoticed. Scruffy looking children playing summer games looked up at the sound of hoofbeats, and scurried away out of sight when their identities were unmistakable. They still got pointed at and followed by the bravest and oldest children – novelty giving way to the threat of danger. The adults that were out though eyed them warily and shied away, but continued their day's work, carefully masked faces and forced routine still visibly showing signs of distrust and fear.

The town's layout was not unusual and the journey was not new for any of the four – in short order they arrived at their destination just off the town center, a modest but well kept two story home. A worn wooden sign reading 'Pallet House – Rooms available' the only indication of its function as one of two hostel's in town. Johann sighed internally – a real inn at least would have real Vermillion ale, over-priced no doubt, but not whatever passed for peasant piss here. But from experience Pallet House was more discrete, and that was important in delicate matters where the locals would kill a man if they weren't more terrified of the repercussions.

"You two, stay outside. You," he nodded to Fatback, "with me." Almost as an afterthought, he flicked a pokéball from his own belt, the ball hitting the ground at his feet with a light _clunk_ before emitting a red light. Seconds later, the light solidified into the form of a Flareon. Two identical clunks followed suit from behind, and as he entered the inn, he heard the distinct growls of Graveler, dragging themselves into position around the fire horses that had been tethered out front.

It was all for show of course – the local townsfolk wouldn't (shouldn't) have anything more dangerous than a blacksmith or stone mason's Machop, completely untrained and unsuited for battle, and the horses were more than capable of looking after themselves. But impressions had to be kept, and overwhelming firepower – literally and figuratively - made a lasting impression.

"Good Afternoon, what can I get -" An auburn haired women stopped mid-sentence when she caught sight of him. Her eyes flickered to the fire pokémon by his side. Flareon did not disappoint, choosing now to open its mouth wide in yawn as it shook of pokéball fatigue... revealing a glimpse of its tiny, needle-like fangs. "Good Afternoon, Mr. Kabuto..."

"Ms. Ketchum. Pleasure to be back in town again. One room, three beds in the commons if you don't mind," Johann reeled off the order like an old habit, polite but clipped.

"Of-of course, sir. Will there be anything else?" She asked, voice trembling slightly and not quite meeting his eyes, they flickered just up to chin level and then flittered over to Fatback, back and forth, back and forth. She reminded him of a frightened Pidgey. Johann on the other hand kept his gaze steady on her – dominance, check. That would make everything else go smoother.

"Yes," he responded after a moment, allowing the silence to draw itself out as his eyes left her and wandered slowly around the parlor. "Please, let the Professor know I've arrived, if you could. I would appreciate if he'd join me here for dinner – I'll take the private dining room for the evening." Without breaking his lazy gaze around the room, he settled two small silver coins on the front desk.

Her eyes locked on the coins. "Of course. I'll get one of the boys to contact the professor right away. Make yourselves comfortable." Her smile strained, but she made the coins disappear quick enough.

When she left, he allowed himself a small smile. Pallet may be a backward pisswater of a pond, but right now he was the biggest son-of-a-Seaking in it, no questions about it.

Professor Oak was a man of enormous intellect and for all his eccentricity and quirks of habit, a reliable and rational fellow, liked and respected by all. He was even still referred to by his old title of "Professor", despite parting ways with the Inidgo Research Institute decades ago. Years ago, in his youth, his prestige had been further supplemented by his status as one of Kanto's groundbreaking researchers in pokémon inter-type biological compatibility. The boy-wonder of the west, when by the age of twenty-three he had solved the missing piece enabling pokémon to breed true with one ditto parent. That was half a century ago, but even so, it spoke volumes that he was unquestionably the leader of Pallet despite a rocky personal relationship with the League and his complete lack of surviving political connections with any of the larger prefectures, particularly Virdian City, Pallet's lifeline with the larger world.

It irked him to be reduced to begging.

"You really do have to appreciate the situation we've been in. Three years of droughts. And ever since the League raised the mobilization orders against Johto, we haven't had any pokémon sent to us capable of battling anything more fierce than a Pidgeotto. I mean no disrespect, but -"

"It doesn't really matter, what you mean," Johann interrupted. "The law is very simple. Every year there is the tribute. That tribute that protects us and ours from the Johtese barbarians who would overrun our frontier given half a chance – a frontier that you live on, I might add. Every year you must pay either in food for the soldiers who protect you, Kiy, or pokémon. We are very generous about this, we give you many options. You know all this. And yet again, your shipments to Viridian do not match what is required of you." Johann paused, taking a sip from his tea and letting his words sink in.

"Do you think that Pallet Town should live in decadence while the rest of Kanto toils for our survival?"

Johann's tone did not betray his grim humor at the situation – he, afterall, set the tribute. Set it deliberately just out of reach. The penalty for insufficient payment was very harsh, and while the tribute went (mostly) in its entirety to the League, the penalties would net him a handsome profit, personally.

Professor Oak backed down, then paused, anger bringing back some semblance of bravery to the older man. "We've _paid_. Every year we pay. If you keep cutting us off at the knees, it won't be long until it doesn't matter what the tribute is, we won't be able to pay it and you won't be able to take your pound of flesh."

Now Johann did laugh, rudely. "We shall see. I've been doing this for a long time, and your people show no signs of ceasing to breed. Tomorrow we shall assemble the town and I shall have a look." Johann's face hardened. "Should anyone not show up, the punishment will be severe."

Professor Oak nodded – he had experienced the ramifications personally last year. Mew alone knew where his grandson was now.

"Very good then, I will see you just after sunrise. Goodnight."

Oak did not need to be told twice. Dinner unfinished, he stood, ready to head home. Just as he was going he stopped, turning around, head bowed in defeat. "Please let me know... this time... will it be boy or girl?"

Johann paused at that, leaning back in his seat slightly, as if thinking through the decision. "Boy, I think. We'll see... but there's a war coming, so..."

Oak nodded grimly, heading out of the house to his own home.

It was well after dark when Ash Ketchum returned home, the long summer evening spent down at the port, he and the other young boys assisting the local fisherman prepare their nets for the following morning,; small, dextrous fingers untying the mess of knots from the great nets and scooping out the gore from gutted fish that were an inevitable consequences of the fisherman's trade, paid in bulbanto and the invaluable currency to ten-year-old boys the world over – stories of the perils and freedoms of the seas, of the great henever they dared too close to the Orange Archipelago. It was a happy Ash who entered the Pallet House that evening, singing a variant of a fisherman's song that his mother would not approve of in the slightest. That he didn't really get it was irrelevant, the fisherman laughed whenever they got the boys to sing it so that's what mattered.

I wanna be, the very best.

Like no one ever was.

So lost in dreams and future ambitions that he didn't notice a very harried Professor Oak nearly bumping into him on the front steps.

_To get a lass outside her dress,_

_And frisk her with me paws._

He let himself in. No merchant ships had come into town while he was in port – they rarely did, nor the spectacular and even rarer frigates of the Kanto navy, with their gilded Gyrados figureheads roaring from their bows. He sighed, another quiet night.

_I will travel across the land searching far and wide,_

_Find every wench, to understand, the power that's inside._

"POKÉMON!" Ash shouted the original chorus that never changed, however inappropriate to the verse in question, slamming the door as he did. He mimicked throwing a pokéball with the doorknob.

"Ash!" His mother appeared out of nowhere, her face strained, voice hushed even while shouting. "Quiet!" she ordered.

"It's quite alright," Ash jumped at the voice, his face flushing. How many times, had he been told to always assume company, no matter how quiet the day's news had been? The man stared at him for a moment, then looked back to Delia. "Didn't recall you having a kid. Night."

"Good Night," Delia responded meekly. As soon as he disappeared up the stares, she gave Ash her best glare. There had been a damn good reason Ash had been out of sight on previous visits.

"I'm sorry," Ash mumbled, not catching her eye. "I know..."

Instead of scolding him and repeating the often enough said lesson, she simply nodded, too exhausted with the day's events. "Go to bed Ash, you need to be up early tomorrow."

Ash shrugged – he was up early every day – but didn't argue the point. "Night, mom."

Ash awoke to the morning bells. But unlike most mornings, these did not quickly stop. Dread filled his stomach as his brain slowly turned on and the bells rang on. There was never a good reason for unceasing bells. _Morning bells are Weepinbells_, the saying went.

Ash got ready as fast as he could and his mother was waiting for him on the steps, they walked quickly to the town common, no words spoken but Delia's hand gripping tighter and tighter on Ash's shoulder.

The townsfolk from across Pallet assembled into a ragged square of not-quite ranks, small familial clumps formed into columns. Johann didn't particularly care for the ragged nature of the formation, watching from the front with the Hikers forming a loose perimeter around the townfolk, Professor Oak looking sick at his side. They were here at least, and when the Hikers finished the head count it came close enough to the census roll he'd been given back weeks ago back in Celadon to not worry about the difference. He knew how the towns worked – any absence could be excused as a fisherman at sea or a merchant hawking his wares to a frontier garrison.

"You have failed in your duty to the League," He decreed as the last bell faded away. "By order, I am to compensate your debt with," a quick, final glance at the parchment granting his authority. _Sixteen_. "Twenty trainer recruits, or three A-level pokémon in each trainer's stead." The last bit was A-level Tauros of course – the denizens of Pallet Town would be lucky to have a B-level pokémon between them.

An anguished gasp rippled throughout the crowd at the steepness of this year's penalty. Any chance of revolt was quenched by the roar of Fatback's Onix at the back of the crowd, and the highpitched thrum of a freshly-released Magneton, blinking into existence at Johann's side.

The Hikers went through the crowd, examining clusters and pulling out boys. Professor Oak recalled Johann's statement from last night – looks like he had not changed his mind. Delia held her breath as a Hiker examined Ash, letting out a silent exhale when he walked by a moment later. _Not this year_.

Fifteen minutes and an eternity later, it was over. Casually, callously, the crowd was dismissed, the normal routine of work coming back with a surreal speed for a town that had just had its ranks of apprentice brick builders and fisherman and militiamen decimated. This was the cruel reality of life; the way things were, simple and awful and brutal.

"Thank you for your hospitality," Johann called out to Delia, once more mounting Rapidash, the Hikers already heading out of town, a scared line of boys tethered behind them. "Till next year."

_Mimemimemimemime._

Two heads snapped up at once, one furious and one terrified.

"Civilians aren't allowed Psychics," Johann growled. "That rule is very, very clear." And with good reason – years ago he'd been young and daring and a damned fool in love and had promised a cute young thing from Cerulean an Abra from the cape if only she'd show him the time of day beneath the infamous Nugget Bridge. And she had and he'd made a show of going up the cape with plans to caper off... only to have his brain damn near fried by one angry bastard of a Kadabra. Never had fully recovered the use of his right hand.

By the Birds, what he'd give to personally choke an Alakazam with its own spoon.

_Mimemimemime!_

"He's not! He's... he's broken. Can't produce so much as a Confuse Ray, I swear on Mew (bad choice). I... I have papers, f-from the Saffron Gym. If you give me a moment, I swear, I'll get them. He came in the last shipment... I can tell you the ship if you give me a minute. He's just help around the house, not even a class-D. If there's a penalty I didn't know about... I can pay... You can take it too..."

Her frightened ramble continued and perhaps – perhaps! - that would have sufficed, and for the most part Johann knew better than to settle personal vendettas on league business, especially ones so damned unpredictible as this. Had the Mr. Mime not chosen that moment to come out and begin sweeping the porch, its enormous mouth frozen in a look of mild astonishment, eyes bugging out and its odd, almost tik-tok walk and it swept a broom from side to side.

"Keep your Mime," Johann growled slowly, "from speaking in my head!" He punched it.

_Mime_! A split second later, Johann was ten feet away, stumbling down the steps of the porch and sprawling on his back. Furious, he picked himself up, then knelt down to pick up his hat and ignoring the heat in his face – the boys must have like seeing that, he'd have to make sure they didn't get any ideas on the journey northward. Insult to injury, he's only been physically assaulted by the psychic pokémon.

Not just the boys. The townspeople were watching, staying back and taking pains not to be seen congregating, but he knew they were all taking pleasure at watching the Collector get his, even in this small way. That couldn't be tolerated – a town could not be allowed to view their Collector with anything but terror.

"Hell with your papers. Keep your damned Mime."

Delia bowed.

"But," he pointed at Ash, whose head was poking out from around the door, "I'm taking the boy. One of mine ran off." The lie was that much worse when all could see the twenty boys clear as day, but a Collector's word was law. That was important.

Delia froze, her worst fears realized. Before she could react, Flareon was released once more, joined by a Beedrill and Machoke.

"Come out boy, quickly now." Ash shuffled unthinkingly forward at the command – a deference to angry League Collectors an engrained trait in mere denizens.

"No! Not my boy! Not Ash!" Delia wailed, desperation forcing action. "Not my boy!" Her screams roused Ash, who suddenly took a heavy step backward – only to find himself locked in place by Machoke.

"Not my boy!" Deliah repeated, rushing towards Ash. A dangerous buzz in her ear caught her attention, and she found Beedrill's stinger hovering dangerously just above her throat.

"Mom!" Ash sobbed, but it was futile. And despite the pleas of mother and child, in mere minutes Ash had joined the line, now twenty-one strong.

"Keep order," the man shouted to the gang of boys. "We walk until Viridian city, and the faster we get there, the faster you get a hot meal."

He nodded at Fatback, and then looked westward, a predatory smile crossing his lips. "No fear, boys. There's war on the wind – and that means if you do exactly as I say, there's no Pewter mines or pressgangs off the Orange coasts for you. Five of you even get to go on to an Academy, so make sure you impress me with good behavior! Fatback, let's have a marching song, get their training started early.

Fatback smirked, a nasty, less-than-fulltooth grin. "You heard him boys, some of you peasant bastard might one day amount to a pokémon trainer. Sing strong, march straight!"

_I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was._

"Louder Boys!"

* * *

_Hikers: A general term for the semi-professional bands of mercenaries that operate within Kanto. While not answering directly to any particular bureaucrat or Gym Leader, all Hikers must belong to officially recognized groups and provide an annual payment to the League in exchange for access to the Pokémon Transportation and Recovery Network run through the pokécenters as well as maintaining an up-to-date writ of assistance on behalf of the Indigo Chateau. Initially formed to supplement the overstretched League forces in establishing control over Mount Moon prefecture and the infamous labyrinth of the Rock Tunnels, the Hikers' numbers have declined in recent years, surviving only on the provincial fringes as rented men-at-arms and privateer crewmen. Due to League restrictions on elemental types, Hikers generally rely on a brute force stable of rock, ground, and fighting type pokémon. It should come as no surprise then that the most popular recruitment grounds for Hikers are ex-military types with fond memories of hard hitters; in particular, veterans from the Pewter City Rhyhorn Corps and the Saffron Hitmons together make up a majority of currently licensed Hikers._

_Route One: A north-south route running from Viridian City to Pallet Town. Initially hailed as an national logistical gem with the intent of turning Pallet Town into the land locked Viridian City's own port-of-entry (and hence the seemingly prestigious name), the deterioration of relations between Johto and Kanto and the subsequent constant simmering of hostilities on the frontier made expansion and maintenance of the east-west routes far more important priorities, and Vermillion's subsequent fall as a hub for international trade made the port route irrelevant. Today, Route One is a backwater, more of a semi-routinely patrolled well marked trail than a proper road. Claims that more dangerous and aggressive pokémon are returning to the area have begun to gain credence._

_Kiy: Kanto Imperial Yen, the currency of Kanto. One Kiy is fixed at .75 grams of gold. Other coinages include the bulbanto, valued at .01 grams; and the pikanto, at .25 grams. Large exchanges are usually administered in nuggets – a large, highly decorative coin worth 1.00 gram of gold. Thanks both to their rarity in common circulation and the most popular images engraved upon them, nuggets are colloquially referred to as Dragongold or Alakazams._


	2. Chapter 1 - The Academy

It's strange, trying to remember my time back at the Academy – it's mostly just a war of emotions and lessons that have become instincts. I remember being hungry all the time, and I remember being tired. _Tired._ It's a running joke among cadets that we'd all slept through at least one of our pokémon battles, and there are entire days of wilderness readiness hikes that I'm pretty sure I walked purely on muscle memory. But somehow we learned. I don't remember a thing from the two week hike from Pallet to Viridian City, but I can sterilize and dress a Raticate bite in under three minutes, dig a trench like I was half-Diglett, and rattle off the twelve most common Beedrill toxin cocktails.

I _do _remember the airship that took us from Viridian to Fuchsia – by then there were only a handful of us left from Pallet Town and I couldn't say why I got chosen to go when most of the other boys were left behind. We'd picked up more boys in every village along the way, but we were too terrified for our futures and shocked by the routine imposed on us to get to know one another better. But I do remember a moment of awe when I boarded that airship, and the pleasure I got seeing Kanto spread about below me. We were unchained on the ship – where were we going to go? - so it gave a tiny illusion of freedom which of course I clung to, like I was some Saffron socialite or Celadon tycoon enjoying a trip with fifty of my closest, poorly washed friends... It wore off quick enough, and by the time we landed in Fuchsia and made the overnight hike to the Academy, I was back to being my scared, starving, lonely self.

The Academy took care of any possible bonds of friendship we might have started to form. The minute we marched through the gates we were doled out to the different commanders. Comradeship between commands beyond professional respect was discouraged, violently so.

I remember the first time I met my command leader, a squat, beefy grade-A asshole with a face like a punched-up Mankey and enormous hands with thick, stubby fingers that never needed much of an excuse to poke you hard in the chest.

"I am Ranger Anderson! I am Command Leader for Red Banner! I am the Gyrados to you sad sack of mud humping Magicarps! Do I make myself clear?!"

One thing I don't remember is Ranger Anderson every speaking below a dull roar. Every sentence was loud and crisp, you could _hear_ the exclamation points click into place.

We stood there, a gaggle of terrified boys whose entire experience in military training was two weeks with a gang of Hikers shouting at us not to lag but not really give a cuss one way or another if we did anything more than that. As I'd soon find out, there was even a wrong way and a right way to digging a pit to take a crap in, and I'd been doing it the wrong way all my life. I think someone might have nodded in response, but nobody said a word back to him.

"When I ask you a question, you respond 'Yes, Command Leader!' Do I make myself clear?!"

"Yes, Command Leader!" We squeaked out as loud as we could.

"From today, your name is Red! Is that understood?!"

"Yes, Command Leader!"

"What's your name?!" Those damnable fingers drilling into the boy next to me.

"Jeffrey, Command Leader," came the terrified reply.

"Are you deaf, Red?! You're name is Red, Red! What is your name?!"

Beyond that it all blends together – suffice it to say that over the next four years, I spent many hours screaming, "Yes, Command Leader!"

The biggest shock was when I saw Gary, three days later.

Gary Oak was Professor Oak's grandson, and as he was only two years older than me I had known him all my life, enough that I would have called him a friend though even back then we were destined for different paths. He was the grandson of the our town leader, and would have been a shoe in for the position even if he hadn't been as driven and quick as he naturally is, and I was the bastard of an innkeeper, who would more than likely have made his living fishing in the rich seas south of Pallet, where a man who runs the gauntlet of Johto privateers and Orange Island pirates to catch enormous Kingler and Seaking could dream of one day being wealthy. But as children, his grandfather had come to our home weekly to drink tea and play chess with some of the other old men, and Gary and I would play together – talking about the sort of adventures we would share when we undoubtedly left Pallet to become great adventurers like the Trainers of old. Or we'd play "Catch 'em All", which was nothing more than a pretense for gangs of boys to pelt one another with apricorns. In the summer, when the days were long and when the fisherman were all out at sea, we'd go to the beach and hunt for the miniature crabs that hid in the sand at high tide and try to make them battle one another.

But Gary had been taken away a year ago by the Hikers, and I had no idea where he'd been, hadn't really understood what it had all meant. But here he was, Gary Oak, in the flesh.

"Gary!" I shouted, running forward, tremendously pleased with this turn of events. He turned sharply, and I froze, I had never seen him so furious – not even when I'd 'Hydro-pumped' him with a bucket of bilge water in front of Jenny Sunstone. He was now dressed in the same shapeless, colorless uniform that I would soon grow accustomed too, the only markings in the ensemble the badge on his chest and his forage cap – both blue.

"Gary, it's me – Ash," I said, trying to hold my smile. Gary said nothing, just marched away from the three other boys he was with and grabbed my arm – hard – and dragging me around a corner of the barracks.

"Ouch! Gary wh-"

"My name's Blue, Red. Got it?"

"No it's not. You're Gar-"

"I'm Blue. You're Red. You're gonna find that out real soon."

"Okay, okay. Sure," I replied sullenly, not understanding just how encompassing the Academy was, but not wanting an argument. "I didn't know you were here... it's good to see you."

Gary... no, Blue, shrugged. "Gotta be somewhere. Stay safe, Red, and keep your head down. We're not really supposed to talk to other Banners outside of joint exercises... you shouldn't come looking for me again."

He brushed past me. I don't know what I expected – I hadn't expected to ever see Gary again so it never crossed my mind... but I guess I thought he was going to ask about how I got here, or tell me how he was doing, or ask about his Grandfather. Not once in the Academy did we ever talk about our past.

"Bye... Ga-Blue," I replied quietly, belatedly.

"Smell ya later, Red," he replied without looking back.

"That doesn't even make sense," I muttered.

Gary snorted, the first trace of good humor I'd heard from him so far. "After your first few weeks, it will." He was right of course, but then, Gary usually was. Bathing wasn't a skill highly valued at the Academy.

Then he was gone.

You know Gary of course, though I doubt you've ever heard him called that. The Academy affected us differently. I never really fit it – I had a competitive streak that didn't die in the Academy, but I still hated the place, still longed for the life and people I'd left behind. But I came to love pokémon, and battling, and camping in the wild. I was torn between loving the person I became at the Academy, and hating the fact that I didn't have a say in the matter.

But Blue? I don't know what happened in that first year, but Blue took to the Academy like a Electabuzz to a thunderstorm. I was the best in my year, but Gary was light years beyond everyone. I never saw him lose a battle, never saw him lag on a forced march, never saw him stumble. Everyone who graduates the Academy is guaranteed a position of prestige – our entire purpose is to form the cadre between the mass of conscripts and joltpikers who make up the bulk of the Kantese armies, and the gentlemen officers comprised of the second and third sons of Gym Leaders and the Prefecture Masters. And of course, Academy graduates all but run the Circuit – from the gladiators themselves to the grizzled stable masters. We were zealots – removed from our families all between the ages of nine and thirteen, and raised to exist for no purpose but to serve Kanto's needs. Gilded slaves – prestige, power even – great gobs of it if you were half as good as Blue, but never an ounce of freedom.

But Blue went above and beyond all that – hell, he even kept the name. I wasn't there to see it, but after graduating Blue was enlisted straight into Blue Banner's Dragon Squad, a damn near unprecedented accomplishment. By the time I got round to catching my second pokémon, he was in charge of it.

His claim to fame though was when some band of outlaws raided Blue Banner during its rotation in the Silver Mountains. The League pushed the story that it was an elite group of Johtese mercenaries as far as it could without accidentally forcing a war declaration to minimize the damage when the casualty reports leaked out, but the prestige hit for the Banner was enormous, especially when it 'leaked' that a detachment of Yellow Banner was responsible for keeping Blue's losses from being much higher.

So Blue suddenly found himself as the youngest commander in the Banner, leading its most elite unit, and the Banner suffering as a national disgrace. And the crazy bastard hits upon the solution of resigning from his post and taking up the Banner's flag as Coliseum Champion, and goes on to _crush _the Master's Circuit. By the end of his rampage in the arenas, Blue Banner was a national treasure – that Dragonite of his set a record for most kills in ranked matches, including ripping off a Nidoking's horndrill and using it to stab the poor bastard _through the eye. _I don't think they'll ever break the attendance record for the match that followed, and he didn't fail to deliver in that one either, melting a Golem.

At one point they were calling him Dreameater, the way he was ruining the other stables.

I've lost track of him since then – open war makes the army a lot more secretive about where their best men are stationed. But that's Blue - I never saw Gary again.

The Academy is a five year program, and despite existing solely to train pokémon masters, I never issued an order to a pokémon until year three. Two years of marching, camping, cleaning, marching, first-aid training, digging holes, filling them in, marching, and endless lessons on everything from pokémon dietary formulas to the how to neutralize Arbok venom. I had a personal knack for bending the rules and getting caught doing it – I spent more time digging ditches and making rice balls than any two other Reds combined, but as I said I had a competitive streak and a knack for outdoor living – by the time third year rolled around, even with my lengthy discipline record I was second in my command for the pokémon draft.

Not that it really mattered – we all got identical Rattata, specially bred on Cinnabar island for cadets to train with.

Life went on at the Academy, the perpetual doom that Kanto was on the brink of war with Johto always looming over our heads. As soon as we proved capable, we were told, it would be off to our respective Banners. Every evening ended with Ranger Anderson grilling us on the traditions and history and current officer's muster of our parent Banner. Red Banner, 2nd oldest. Crest: Charizard Claw imposed over a tail flame. Motto, _Forged in the Fire_. Home Station: Vulcan-on-Cinnabar. On and on and on. The theory being that we would integrate seamlessly into the unit upon our arrival: I am told that practice is not quite so accommodating on this matter.

But I mastered it. I learned to fight with Rattata, then Raticate and Beedrill, the backbone of the army, though below what would ultimately be expected of Academy cadets. I was given a crash course on the methods of elemental warfare, and after the thrill of watching a visiting Green Banner gladiator's Charmeleon's flamethrower roast three dozen Rattatta in two minutes flat my disciplinary issues evaporated like a bubble attack on a Charizard, _I would be accepted_ into the fire elemental program, and nothing like a poor field report would stand in the way.

We learned of the various plant and bug type toxins that an army in the wild might have to deal with, and the even more terrifying ones an enemy might specifically target you with, flights of Butterfree synchronized over an enemy formation, each releasing a slightly different spore set to create an impossibly complex fog of death. The worst three weeks of my life were harvesting the fine granules of poison off live Butterfree, gas mask and full body suits be damned.

By the end of my fourth year, I had grudgingly accepted my future and was prepared to meet it with gusto. When the ACE trainers from Red Banner came at the beginning of the 5th year, I would apply for Fire Group. When war did finally come, I wouldn't be among the vast columns of peasants equipped with nothing but Ratticates and Beedrill and a joltpike to ensure they went in the right direction, the only objective to close ranks with the enemy. I would not sit behind the lines on the fortified high ground, calculating trajectories for Solar Beams from relative safety. I would be one of the literal high fliers, leading a Charizard and Magmar in a battle of wits and balls against a single enemy trainer. And once I defeated him, this faceless Johtese knight I conjured in my imagination, I would direct Magmar to continue to press the attack from the flank while I rose into the sky upon Charazard, taking the battle to the air and roasting our enemies from above to the cheers of my comrades.

Then I met Pikachu.

It was my final patrol of 4th year, late in the spring. In a few weeks, the fifth years would be taken into their Banners and we would have a few weeks filled with 'wilderness readiness' marches until the Collectors finished rounding up the next batch of 'recruits' made up of misfits and outcasts and ransomed children, who would make up the next class and the cycle began anew. The fifth years had already been selected into elemental teams or recruited directly into their Banner's gladiatorial stables, had already accomplished what the Academy was designed to train them for. In the tradition of the Academy and to prepare the soldiers as best as possible for what was to come, the fourth years undertook all the normal duties of the fifth years, and the fifth years participated in _The Culling._

The final and most important lesson of the Academy is that you arrive with nothing, and you leave with nothing. No family. No secrets. No friends No _name. _And no pokémon.

By fifth year, a cadet has five pokémon. A Raticate. A Zubat. A Beedrill. A Bellsprout. A Magicarp. That thrice-damned Magicarp... bad enough to have a punishment run in the middle of December, but to have to run three miles while carrying a thrashing Magicarp over your head... The Academy only has one way for a cadet to be kicked out – anything else no matter how severe they'll just punish you as they see fit - you don't get to escape. But lose any of your five pokémon and it's immediate expulsion and sent Mew knows where – The excavation teams northwest of Cerulean or Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town are popular guesses, though I suppose I know from experience that the latter is incorrect. If one of our comrades showed a habitual weakness or incompetency, we were encouraged to make sure his pokémon didn't survive. As cruel as it it, it does serve an important lesson – pokémon battles are won by weakening the opponent as much as possible and pulling out only when your own is near death. Wars have been lost by armies too timid to fight to the bone or too reckless to pull back when pokémon had done the most that pokémon could do.

You can imagine, then, how cautious and protective, how careful and caring, a trainer can be towards his pokémon. The early battles blur together – endless battles of Rattata versus Rattata, and then Beedrill against Beedrill. But finally in fourth year we competed in true, three-on-three battles. I never lost to the same trainer twice, except to Blue – even then he was exceptional. I learned quickly and by the middle of fourth year I had developed a technique for linking Beedrill's Poison Sting with Pin Needle that led me to eight consecutive victories without having a single recall... until Blue became the first cadet in history to actually use Magikarp, letting my Beedrill bloat the fish with poison, recalling it at the last minute and letting Raticate tear my depleted Beedrill to shreds.

I'm digressing, but reflect on that for a moment: Blue sent out a universally recognized worthless _fish _without so much as a puddle in sight, with the deliberate intent of using it as a pin cushion and risking a pokémon whose death would see him thrown out of the Academy, so that Beedrill would be less dangerous than a crippled Pidgey and he could break my streak.

He's _insane._

But that is not enough – as I said, you can't be too reckless, but you can't be too timid. So the Academy has two more lessons:

Pokémon die. The pokémon was never yours to begin with.

The Culling is a death match. All pokémon must die – no pokémon ever leaves the walls of the Academy alive. The winner of the tournament is guaranteed a spot as rookie Groupleader when he reaches his banner... but only after he takes a knife to any of his pokémon that survived the finals of the tournament. It's a warrior's rite of passage.

It is the most important part of the entire Academy. There can be no 'emotional attachments' to one's tools of war, and there can be no self-delusions that we have any control over our own lives or those of the pokémon we may temporarily have custody of.

For myself though, this was not immediately important. As a fourth year, the upcoming tournament would be the first that I was allowed to watch, and in the mean time I was busy trying to accomplish the tasks vacated by the preparing competitors. And so it was in the early hours of the morning that I was on perimeter patrol when I heard a high pitched squeal from the cadet victory garden.

_Kaaaaaaaa!_

"Hell is that, Red?" The Yellow I was partnered with for the evening, a skinny kid who was even shorter than me, with shrewd, beady eyes and enormous ears that seemed to jump all over the place picking up everything – the perfect guy to have partnered with on night patrol.

"Better find out," I muttered, annoyed when anything on patrol went less than smoothly. We walked towards the garden slowly, keeping the noise down to pinpoint any further outcries.

"_Pi pi pi pi pi!_"

"A Pikachu," Yellow said in disgust, a moment later his guess confirmed when a flash of yellow bolted down the wire with a sizzle and pop. "Shit... it's caught on a barb. Fuck it, we're not fighting a terrified Pikachu surrounded by metal wiring at this hour. You stay here, I'm gonna get the get the you-know-what."

I nodded - I did know. Crossbow with an arrow seeped in Beedrill toxin, perfect for ridding oneself of a pest that could electrocute you. It was a common superstition not to name it in front of pokémon.

"Right, I'll... keep watch then, see you in ten." I replied. Yellow nodded and I moved closer, curious to get a sight of the Pikachu. I'd never seen one before – they never come down as far as Pallet and my only experience with electric types was a blast – literally – when we got a one day seminar in how to properly destruct Voltorb. Pikachu don't battle – they're vanity pets for a governor's wife or gym leaders' daughters, or else killed on sight if they stray too far from the wilds and too close to someone's radish patch. Like this poor bastard had, apparently.

I don't know what would have happened if it had just sat there glassy eyed in fear like you'd expect from a rodent, or had thrashed about emitting sparks. I probably would have sat there for a moment before looking away, and Yellow would have come with the crossbow and Pikachu would be dead and that would be that. But beyond the odd whimper and hiss at its bleeding and tangled hind legs, the thing just looked at me. Straight in the eye, a helpless frown on its face. Hissing at first and sending giant bolts of electricity down the wire – I hadn't thought Pikachu could hold that much in them. But after that, it just stared at me, pleading silently for help. I had my redlight shining on it, and its little yellow face just stared back at me.

_Pikapi._

What the hell. Maybe it wouldn't survive in the wild with that injury, but I didn't want to kill the thing. And maybe a part of me was always looking for ways to defy the Academy, even if it meant getting up close and personal with a biological power outlet.

"Come on out, Bellsprout."

Bellsprout looked at me, little eyes that always amused me with their perpetually dopey expression.

"I need you to ground yourself on your roots. Then use your vines to pull the wire apart, just enough to get Pikachu free."

Bellsprout gave one bobbly nod of its head, two thin vines splitting from its body and pushing up on the wire. Pikachu hissed again when the vines approached and the barb in the wire punched out its leg with a sharp twang that screamed in my ears in the silence of the night. It was a testament to how drained Pikachu already was that he didn't go sparking-nuts at that. Gingerly, it dragged itself through the opening, eyes bouncing between Bellsprout, the wire, and myself.

Then it poked at the half-eaten radish I assume it had been trying to smuggle out before it got caught, looked at the fence, then jumped at _me_.

_Shit. I'm going to fry and its my own damn fault._

That's how Yellow found me five minutes later, a Pikachu clutching my jacket, me frozen in place trying to sooth the damn thing without daring to touch it, and Bellsprout just staring at us, truly acting like the vegetable that it is.

"What... what the hell?"

"Shh, don't startle it!" I hissed.

"Knock it down so I can... you know," he leaned his head to the side, pointing to the crossbow he was carrying.

Even a wild pokémon can deduce that a human holding a giant piece of wood and a sharpened arrow smelling faintly of beedrill toxins is not a good sign. It looked up at me, panic on its face and its cheeks began to sizzle. Even more horrifying, it nudged its face between the buttons of my jackets, literally burrowing into my clothes.

"No, put that thing down," I hissed, scared utterly shitless.

"What... Oh. Yeah, fair enough. But if we're going to hide it I want half the pot."

It took me a second to register what he was talking about. The fourth years have an underground tournament that parallels the official Culling, though the real challenge is just to get into the tournament in the first place. It requires a cadet to catch a wild pokémon – without a pokeball – and keep it hidden from the Rangers until the battle date. I'm sure they half turn a blind eye, but it's no easy feat, with dazed looking Rattata being flushed out every couple of days in the weeks leading up to it, everyone denying having any idea how it got there. Contestants generally range from Rattata caught in the mess hall to Rattata caught in the latrines to the occasional pissed off but crippled Spearow 'rescued' during a march and 'smuggled' back inside. A Pikachu would win any competition against such a range of opponents, hands down. Wouldn't do any good for the inevitably dead Pikachu, but I could see Yellow's train of thought.

Still – it was that or the crossbow. Or more pressingly, Pikachu zapping the hell out of me before there was enough distance for Yellow to make a shot at it.

So I kept calming Pikachu and we snuck into the Kitchens and grabbed one of the plastic boxes designed to be locked tight for field use, and hid Pikachu in amongst the rice crates. Yellow had the brilliant idea of taking his field knife and wedging a hole at the bottom of the box so that we didn't asphyxiate the thing and putting it next to the wheezing generators to help drown out its squeaking. One hell of a way to end the night.

I thought about it for three days. I hadn't been assigned patrol again, and I was just about ready to leave my bed unmade and my shovel dirty and my Magikarp out of its poké-ball to get back on the punishment duty so I'd be able to visit Pikachu during the night – I hadn't dared do more than use a straw to shoot rice through its breathing hole once a day. I was going to let Pikachu go, tournament be damned.

But I couldn't guarantee I'd get patrol anyway, so I stewed in paralysis instead. Until the night before the tournaments, I flat out abandoned post and sneaked out of the barracks. I'd pocketed some of my dinner – violation in itself – and went to see Pikachu immediately after lights out. That's the best time – patrols haven't really got going, everybody else is out like a light. We've all done it before, and I got into the Kitchens without any trouble at all.

I moved quickly past the giant soup vats to the endless rows of crates in the back of the kitchens. Taking out my redlight, I counted them: twelve from the left, three down – there was Pikachu.

"Pikachu, I'm getting you out." I whispered. I opened the box, feeling sick as soon as I did. The first thing I noticed was the noxious smell of rat piss.

The second was Pikachu huddled in a corner, its tail pressed tightly against itself, the plastic slightly but clearly warped where it had obviously had a go at busting out with as much of a thundershock as it could muster. The thing was shaking, but there was a sentience to it as it looked at me, and to this day I don't know whether it was really there or I was projecting, but I saw sadness and betrayal.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. I hadn't expected to have to touch Pikachu – I planned on taking the box – but I pulled the soaking rodent out of the box, the foulness of the stench of it and the threat of electric shock not even entering my mind. I'd done enough latrine duty by this time not to be worked up about the former. The latter still surprises me to this day, though Pikachu has more than made up for it – I've received enough volts since that day to power a medium sized prefecture.

The little guy clung to my chest – having nowhere else to go, and its leg still looked terrible. Holding it against my jacket with one hand, I pulled out the soggy raddish and carrot mince I had taken from dinner, holding it up to Pikachu. It looked at me for a moment warily, then sniffed at the food, still cautious, before nibbling weakly at it.

"There you go, it's alright," I whispered. Catching another glimpse of its leg, I shifted it slightly to the side, unbuttoning my jacket just enough to get to the inside pocket that contained my first aid kit. Scrabbling in it I pulled out my well-used tube of antiseptic, putting a dollop on my finger and wondering why for the life of me I hadn't done this to begin with. If everyone else's smuggled pokémon were in the same state as Pikachu: wounded, starving, half-asphixiated and drowning in its own filth – then this whole tournament was pretty damned pointless.

I rubbed the cream gently on Pikachu's wounded leg, thankfully earning nothing more than a hiss and a static shock for my trouble. Then, taking the initiative, I went over to the sinks, dampening a dish towel and rubbing it over Pikachu's fur to at least mitigate the worst of the grime.

Truthfully, I think the little guy was winning me over the entire time, but the look of gratitude sealed it.

After having nothing for four years, and no sight of that ever changing, Pikachu was _mine. _

What happened next was stupid, reckless, and very likely life threatening. But you cannot, absolutely _cannot, _imagine the value of actually being in control of something, to having something – _someone_ – under your care when you are used to having absolutely nothing. I can't rationalize in words how strong a bond I share with Pikachu is, because it is an impossible emotion to communicate that sense of belonging to a man who has always been free. But as I've said, Pikachu was _mine._

"Who's back there. Show yourself!" A voice from the storeroom called out in a whisper-yell.

The normal approach would have been to make a run for it. Back to the bunks and hoping you could evade the other patrol member who would undoubtedly be lurking behind waiting to catch what his partner smoked out. Generally, one didn't try to do that why holding an injured and illegal pokémon.

Granted, my just standing like a panicked Stantler wasn't much better of a solution.

"Identify," the voice called out again, before the light was blinding me.

"Ah shit... Red?" And there was Blue.

"Blue? You shouldn't be on patrol, fifth year." I responded stupidly.

"Not if you're team leader," he growled. "And what are you doing... the _hell_ is that." His light flashed from my face to the bundle in my arms. "What are you doing with a Pikachu, _for Mew's sake."_

"Blue, it's a long story, it's... can I go, just this once?" I pleaded.

"Not without an explanation," he snorted. "Damn Red, I'm actually impressed. You're gonna win for sure."

I looked down, shaking my head. "No, I _was _gonna win. I'm letting it go."

First time I've seen Blue at a loss, before or since. "The hell you are!" Blue hissed. "You this soft inside? You'll never graduate." His eyes blazed at me with fury and disgust. "You put that Pikachu back in the box and you damn well fight with it, or I'm going to kill it myself. Then I'm reporting you and getting you drummed out."

Truthfully, at the time I would have done it. I wasn't in love with the Academy – I hated what it had done to me and I was feeling _something_ towards the bundle of electrical pizazz that was clinging to me for dear life despite everything I'd put it through – but I was too proud to be anything but the best, and the scorn and expulsion I would have received for not only capturing and hiding a pokémon but then letting it go... I would have given in to Blue. Plus, Blue's like that, there's a reason he's shot up so quickly through the ranks, and it's not all because of natural talent for battle. He has an... aura... a personality that it's much easier to just do what he says that put the energy into disobeying. He would have easily taken his grandfather's position had he not been taken away.

Pikachu unilaterally made the choice for me. In all our years together, I've never seen a more perfectly executed Thunderwave. Keep in mind the little bastard was clutching me tighter than a Shellder pounding for Slowpoké tail, and yet I didn't feel a thing, and the next thing I saw was a flash of light and Gary topple to the floor. At first I thought he was dead, until I saw his hand twitch.

I was, undoubtedly, deadmeat. I would be caught, expelled, and if I was lucky it was a lifetime in the quarries at Pewter, if I was unlucky I'd be taking said Pewter stone and building barricades in the Silver mountains until I keeled over from exhaustion or a Johto raider planted a Raticate in my gut.

To hell with _that._ When the choice was taken away, it became crystal clear there hadn't been a choice to begin with. No ties – the consequence of taking a way a name, a home, a family. No loyalty. And Pikachu sealed the deal: sure, having a wild pokémon nominally under my control paralyze the Academy's star pupil was _bad, _but technically speaking, I believe that makes me the only pokémon trainer to defeat Blue.

I ran off into the night with nothing more than Pikachu and the clothes on my back. I knew – or thought I knew – it was a hopeless act of desperation, but I ran. The Academy perimeter was a joke to get by – what with the current patrol leader unconscious on the kitchen floor. The running gag was the Academy was deliberately so poorly defended so that we'd be more alert to the danger of an attack from a wandering Sandslash pack or Wheezing outbreak. In truth, nobody went into the wilderness without a Ranger carrying serious pokémon firepower, and that was something none of us had. My five pokéballs were locked up in the armory as I didn't have overnight permission to carry them – not having a scheduled patrol – and without prior permission they wouldn't unlock outside of the Academy boundaries anyway. I was the first recruit beyond some very stupid (and very dead) raw first years who inevitable tried and fatally failed to ever attempt an escape. I was the first to do it with a pokémon. I am told that since then, regulations have tightened considerably and nobody has reaccomplished my feat.

Something else I've beaten Blue on.

But I was loose now. And as Pikachu rode shotgun on my right shoulder as I ran away, the tangy scent of piss still whafting past my nostrils, I realized: _I_ hada pokémon.

And once again, my name was _Ash._

I have no problem telling you my real name. The League knows it I'm sure – though my wanted posters always refer to me as the Electric Outlaw. I've gone my Red as well undercover – more a dig at the Academy and because I reflexively respond to it than any affection for it but there you go. And the name Ash isn't exactly uncommon. Anyway, I'm sure Domino has already passed that tidbit on to you, and a lot more besides, so no sense pretending I have some long forgotten and deeply mysterious past.

What happened next... well, a lot of things happened before I really got my act together – by the time I did Blue was ruling the Dragon roost. My first thought was to go home to Pallet, as if that was anything short of suicide. But to do that, first I'd have to get away from the Academy and out of Fuschia prefecture, and that's where my new adventure began. It was an interesting parallel in many ways – like when I'd left Pallet, here I was without food, adequate sleep, family, a plan, a future...

But there was one enormous difference. I had a pokémon.

* * *

Joltpike: A long metal spear with an well-insulated handle, designed to release a weak but rapid and repeating electronic pulse. Due to the heat of battle making verbal commands effectively useless between the main battle units, and the general tactic of equipping poorly trained conscripts with easily replaced Raticate and Beedrill, the joltpike is designed to direct these two pokémon into a straightforward assault against the enemy. Once the ranks close, the joltpike is an effective weapon against enemy footsoldiers, though many troops are equipped with shortswords once a battle degenerates into hand to hand combat.

Banner: The Kanto Imperial Forces are officially divided into eleven tightly regulated and highly segregated armies, each having its own full and independent support forces. The Banners, in current order of prestige, are Blue, Yellow, Black, Red, Purple, Gold, White, Grey, Green, Silver, and Orange. It should be noted that Orange is unlikely to increase its relative standing anytime soon, as it is currently in open revolt against the League and its remnants are serving as the active government of the Orange Archipelago. Plans to purge Orange entirely from the Imperial Muster and replace it with a Lavender Banner have been quietly abandoned following the Gengar Massacre.


	3. Chapter 2 - The Hat

Ever since I've made my presence known, it's always the same two defining characteristics in every description calling for my capture: Pikachu, and my hat. I'll get to the hat soon enough – it's a good story, how I got it.

Pikachu was not my friend at first. Sure, he'd stuck with me during the escape and had absolutely knocked the snot out of Blue, but he had a vested interest in making sure his human transport was in working order. He was operating with two bad legs for another week, so he put his wariness towards me aside as we stole our way northward under the cover of darkness, roughly in the direction of Vermillion city. I assume the Academy looked for me in the south, operating on the assumption that I would head for Fuchsia and try either head east along the sea roads or try and cast away on a freighter at port. If they came north, I certainly never saw them. Instead I headed into the Safari – the enormous expanse of old forest broken by great swaths of savannah that has to this day resisted every effort of human settlement. The League quit even making a token effort of taming it not long before I went to the Academy, in the end deciding better effort was spent in allowing the area to serve as a natural breeding ground for wild and powerful pokémon, sending in punishment battalions to harvest the 'crops' of Executor, Rhydon, Tauros, Kangaskhan... whatever was needed and whatever could be caught.

The Academy was on the very edge of this zone, and as I said – we never went out into the wilds of the Safari Zone without a Ranger equipped with at least an Arcanine or Nidoqueen.

I did it with a Pikachu. Fifteen days. _That's_ the time that sealed the deal between myself and Pikachu as true comrades-in-arms. The fourth day in we had came across a Rhyhorn herd just as we were about to break cover and begin our first ordeal of a dash through a night's and day's hike through open grassland. Instead of trying our luck against hungry Rhyhorns, we waited for two days at the tree line. Enough time for a resident Ekans to catch the scent of wounded Pikachu.

Pikachu got off enough of a shriek to wake me up before Ekans pinned it down, its long, muscular body pushing Pikachu into the earth and keeping well away from Pikachu's tail. When we had run, I hadn't had the wherewithal to spend time getting my equipment together – all I'd had on me was what I always had on my uniform: my first-aid kit, my pocket compass... and the great beast of a bootknife that was essential to anyone living on the frontier. I didn't even think – I had my knife drawn and open and slit that bastard's belly from throat to rattle in one ugly hackjob.

That was really the beginning of our friendship. Pikachu, staggering for air in the dark while I continued to strip down the dead Ekans. Even with the mangled cut line, an Ekans's skin is still a valuable commodity – when they evolve into Arbok the soft underbelly becomes tough and plated with scales, and the rest of the body becomes so tough that for a long time, there was debate on whether or not Arboks should be considered half-rock types. Ekans skin may not be as useful to the pokémon, sure, but it was much more valuable to a tanner.

I took the skin and left the meat – my knife had pierced one of the venom sacs which was a shame – poisons are always in high demand amongst the right crowd. I left the meat too – same reason.

Two days later Pikachu returned the favor, frying three dozen Spearow trying their damndest to peck my eyes clean from my skull when I accidentally disrupted their nesting grounds. After that, we were close – some friendships just need a few mutual lifesaving to get them jump-started.

We didn't push our luck – as soon as I was certain that nobody was risking life and limb searching for us this far north, we moved west, towards the sea. There's no road linking Vermillion and Fuchsia for the obvious reason of their being about a billion absurdly violent pokémon blocking the path, but while the vast mass of the Safari is uninhabitable, humanity survives along the rocky coastline that makes up the eastern shore of Vermillion bay, the narrow plain wedged against the coast protected by isolated clusters of rocky hillsides. The towns are all very poor, very isolated... very hostile to strange boys walking in with wild Pikachu on their shoulder. I was lucky that two weeks in the wild had made my field fatigues indistinguishable – all cloth looks the same under an inch thick layer of mud and grime. We may have looked like a pair of ferals – Pikachu at that time still maintained a disconcerting gleam in his eye whenever he had an opportunity to thunder-shock my dinner – but it wasn't obvious that I was an Academy deserter.

Needless to say the locals didn't take to me particularly kindly, and I'm sure they didn't believe a word of my story that I was a surveyor that had gotten horribly lost from my camp – chased by a Tauros herd – and were there any boats heading to Viridian by way of Pallet?

In the end I traded my Ekans skin – well overpaying – to a less-than-scrupulous fisherman who asked no questions when I asked to be dropped off on Route Seventeen on the far side of the bay.

I never went back to Pallet. It wasn't my home anymore and as I slowly accepted during the weeks in the wild, showing up would place my mother and old friends and neighbors in danger, harboring a fugitive slave. Instead I went to Viridian City.

Viridian is a ghastly place. The largest city on the frontier, it's nothing like the carefully planned city blocks of Celadon or the 'star' arrangement of Saffron, nor full of the same affluence. Viridian is a fortified compound of provincial bureaucrats and noveau aristocracy surrounded by an ocean of sprawling ghettos. Which was, to be honest, the perfect situation: a strong man with an illegal-but-not-obviously dangerous pokémon could prosper without the authorities considering him worth going after. All those public bulletins showing me in an old-time Ranger jacket with Pikachu on my shoulder and my face shrouded by my hat... should have seen what I looked like then, dressed in patchy, mis-matched cast-offs just one step above full-time vagrant, patterned with visible scorch marks from electric shocks. Yes; I, Ash, Red, the Electric Outlaw, and my favorite: the one time Phantom Prince of Lavender Town... spent a year scraping together bulbanto as a ghetto Ratticater, hawking Pikachu's thunderwave out to the more respectable taverns and brothels that needed to at least look presentable without visible infestations and selling my catches to the street bosses, who turned them into 'stew' which was doled out to great crowds in exchange for future favors and support. Not how I'd envisioned my future. If you're keeping tabs, Blue has now graduated and was probably learning how to para-drop off of Pidgeots right about now.

I kept to myself. I'm not one to wax lyrical about the oppressed underclasses, and most of the people I dealt with were nasty pieces of work – the same petty tyrants I had grown accustomed to in Academy commanders, minus the authority to subject me to their company, so I didn't burden myself with it for the fun of it. And while Pikachu and I were close, he had a healthy dose of complete disdain for any other human – still does do a large degree... people didn't bother us.

Events that followed were, looking back, my first interaction with Team Rocket. Not that I knew it at the time – not that _anyone_ knew that Rockets had effectively taken over Viridian gym and were planning a coup for control of the city. But for the first time since I'd arrived, eighteen months ago, the police were out in force all over the city.

It was brilliantly done, in one fell swoop the more independently minded street bosses were rounded up, their less-than-reputable slumlord wealth confiscated and used to pay for an enormous 'renovation' of the city. The ghettos didn't improve much, but the bread and circuses were certainly more spectacular. And if every week another clerk or gym ensign was arrested on corruption charges? Nobody cared – and most of them probably deserved a hell of a lot more, besides.

I don't like Team Rocket, though it wasn't always that way. But, even though I didn't know who was behind it at the time, I was concerned... like I said, most of the guys that got taken down _were _corrupt and quick to public displays of violence and intimidation. But there was a ruthless competency to the new structure... and that meant there was no longer a tolerance towards independent young men with wild eyed Pikachu.

They came in the early hours of the morning, four Bug Catchers more eager and loyal than well practiced in thuggary to the tiny one room lodge I had been holing up in. Pikachu woke up before they got in and unleashed a thunderwave that took down three of the Catchers before they'd even released a pokémon. The fourth reacted to the sight of his three downed teammates with more bravery than I would have expected - he let two pokéballs fly: and a moment later I was playing host to a Butterfree and a very angry Sandslash.

I didn't have to say much to Pikachu – I think I shouted out, "Fry the 'Free!" Pikachu nodded and bolted behind me, taking my left flank and shooting the rest of his load into the bug pokémon. I caught an eye on the red tinted cloud emitting from its wings that was the tell-tale sign of Poison Powder, but it didn't get the chance to flutter the cloud towards us before every nerve in its body was lit up like a Christmas tree.

I still had my knife, those fourteen precious inches of Cinnabar steel that was now the only remaining evidence I'd ever spent time at the Academy. I stared down Sandslash, making sure it had a clear view of the knife – rodent types of any element have similar behavioral instincts, and one of those is to equate prolonged and steady eye contact with a predator and therefore, a primary threat.

It slashed at me with near blinding speed – I dodged on years of instinct, keeping my blade well forward. Bug Catcher ordered another slash attack and I barely got out the way, a fraction of a second slower and my intestines would have been littering the floor.

Neither Sandslash not its trainer saw Pikachu's quick attack slam into Sandslash's flank. Sandslash staggered to the right – surprised but effectively unharmed – and shifted its attention from myself to Pikachu.

"Sandslash, Poison Sting!" I heard that, and their joint attention on Pikachu gave me the opening I needed.

Charging into the gap, I raised my knife then slashed downward, the blade making a wide arc before it _squelched, _piercing skin and plunging into his throat.

It was the first time I'd killed a human being, and I hadn't thought about it at all beyond making sure I did it right. The Academy would be proud.

Sandslash swiped at Pikachu a few more times, but it was fighting blindly now without any sort of guidance, just charging on instinct and bloodlust. Without missing a beat I frisked the body, quickly pulling a pokéball off the magnetic strip on the Catcher's waist. Flick the safety on the edge of the center 'button', aim the pokéball, wait for the rotating crystals embedded between the two 'skins' of the ball to align and focus the stasis beam. Beam to hit Sandslash and confirm the DNA marker embedded in every captured pokémon, wait for the laser to transform mass into energy, scanning and saving the pokémon's physical state for future recall, and within seconds, just like that, no more Sandslash as the laser retreats and the lens's protective plastic covering snaps back into place and the pokéball pulls in on itself, shrinking down to carrier size. Problem solved.

Except for the dead agent and his paralyzed comrades covering my floor next to a charred Butterfree. I looked out the window, catching sight of my reflection. _By the Birds! _I could pass for a horror monster, eyes bugshot and blood streaking my face and hair, a crazed Pikachu at my side, stray jolts of static fizzing from his tail.

Unlike my last escape, I had the presence of mind to already have a bag ready to go in case I needed to leave in a hurry, and after field stripping the BC's right there on my floor I added a nice handful of Kiy to my pockets and a new pair of boots.

And, of course, one official Pokémon League cap, courtesy of the dead Bug Catcher. I had no idea it would become so much a part of me, a part of my identity – at the time I only realized that while my room's basin of water would make my face presentable, nothing in the world was going to hide the fact that my hair looked like I'd taken a bubble bath at a slaughter house.

So no – not a trophy, but a daily reminder of the first human I killed. It's important – to remember... not that you Rockets give a rip about that.

That was the end of my first spree in Viridian. The writing was on the wall – even if I'd been able to stay hidden despite Pikachu's fairly obvious presence, the two of us were considered a potential power rival for the new kids in town, and it was a battle we couldn't win if attacked by any serious force.

That being said, I was exhilarated. We had won the battle, and all things considered had won handily. Looking back, it's easy to see why – Bug Catchers with second rate pokémon are more than enough for chasing down and locking up terrified and sleep deprived civilians, but none of those bastards had ever been in a real fight against a proper trainer with a proper pokémon. It showed. And eventually I realized that if this is what the internal security of Kanto was like, from Viridian to the Cereulean Cape...

… It wasn't, of course, as I'd learn the hard way later – but even wrong ideas (especially wrong ideas!) can be enough to get you started on a path you can't later just up and quit. Had the Catchers come with murder in mind they would have had pokémon out and ready before I was awake, or a Charmeleon would simply have let me die in an inferno, no battle at all.

Figuring that what had worked once could work twice, I got out of town the same way I'd got in – by going into areas so damned dangerous nobody would think twice about following after me. Which is how I ended up in the Viridian Wilds.

There was a temptation to stay there forever. I had been abducted from my home to be trained as a gladiator and a conscript for some ever-present war always looming just on the horizon, escaped when I'd accidentally attacked the star cadet, ran away to a slum and then nearly been wiped out by a city-wide cleansing of the undesirables. The League had not endeared itself to me. And the slums I had lived in had been not much better, masses of people who were sheep towards their League masters but feral wolves when fighting amongst themselves. Call it a personal crisis of morality.

In the wilds things were much simpler. No time for philosophizing when you needed to keep your mind focused on hunting your next meal or keeping an eye out for the next Venomoth swarm as soon as you lit a cooking fire. Pikachu didn't give a rip one way or another, threatening people and pokémon with equal abandon. Even I was subject to short bolts when he was in a mood or I'd interrupted a particularly enjoyable nap.

Things were changing in the wilds though. The sprawling jungles of western Kanto were legendary for their almost mystical properties. Evil spirits ruled the jungle, the ancient ancestors of modern pokémon, so the tale went – spirits that could change the land at will, make a man walk in circles forever without realizing it. Whole Banners could go in and never make it back out, and even airships seemed to suffer an abysmal survival rate when flying overhead.

Apparently, the League had finally decided to attack the problem with overwhelming force, its standard approach. When I was brought to Viridian as a kid, I remember that it took an airship to go to Fuchsia and only the most reckless defied the odds and tried to shoot straight for Pewter – there was no land route to either. They tamed one tiny line that zig-zags through the wilds, but it took literally armies of surveyors and engineers and sappers and miners and lumberjacks slogging through the jungle, clearing an enormous northbound road through the undergrowth. Reports of frustration abounded – roads being forced to dog leg and double back time and time again by newly discovered valleys and wetlands that even Kanto's finest couldn't simply draw a line through.

I stayed away when all this was going on – I had no use for a road between two towns when I had no place in either: I hiked deeper into the wilds, no small thrill at the danger and excitement and realized that I could very well be traversing into zones never before touched by human feet.

Winter was coming, and Pikachu and I built a lean-to against one of the enormous trees that grew this deep in the jungle, thatching the walls as best we could. There was a creek nearby, rapidly flowing down where it would run into the Amaranth River, just north of the city and then down Vermillion Bay. The great trees in our little habitat had enormous, leathery fruit that Pikachu quickly came to love, though I found their juice bitter and the pith far too tough. But he had a food source and as long as there was food to hunt, I wasn't particularly worried – on leaving town I had learned from the Safari, and had spent the roll of stolen Kiy on as much dehydrated trail chow as I could carry. Fresh hunts were preferable, but I wouldn't starve for a long time.

I was a damned fool. Even if that winter hadn't been cold enough to freeze the bill off a Magmar, there's a world of difference between living poorly in a city winter, and trying to survive quite literally in the middle of nowhere in a homemade shelter while the occasional snowstorm tries its best to put you out entirely into the cold.

The only good thing about the snow is that it came at all – Pikachu managed to flush out a burrow of hibernating Rattata, and I lived on frozen rat meat for three weeks, packed in snow so as not to spoil quite so fast. Even so, my supplies were dwindling far too quickly.

Finally, I was ready to call it quits. I doubted that road construction was still going forward in this weather, but I ought to find the road in a week – two if the weather were bad (and though I tried to avoid the worry, never if I kept getting turned around by the terrain, or wild pokémon, or simply keeled over along the way) – if I went south and west. Dying in the wilderness was suddenly a lot less desirable compared to dying in Viridian, at least there I could do it in front of a tavern fire with a hot tea or even a spiced _umeshu_.

Course, to do that first I'd have to hike through a snow dusted forest with a pissed off, freezing Pikachu.

Then a wild Growlithe appeared.

I should have known it was a setup – a fire-type showing up right at the time I would have happily re-enrolled in the Academy in exchange for a second lining for my sleeping bag – but as that would prove, I was beyond caring. Growlithe came right up to the lean-to as if it owned the place, letting out a doggy half-sneeze, then _flumped_ down next to me.

Its body radiated a beautiful, beautiful heat, and I was sold. Even Pikachu, after twitching its ears at our intruder, did nothing more than move itself so as to get the full effect of its heated puffs of breath.

Reinvigorated with this 'capture', I didn't think but to follow when Growlith went bounding out the next morning, my spirits much higher than they'd been since the first snowfall. Pikachu burrowed into my jacket as he'd taken to doing, and we followed. Growlithe led us on a full hike that day, and by the time I realized just how hungry I was, Growlithe went charging into a thicket and one frightened squawk later, and it came back, a scortched Farfetch'd clasped in its jaws. I know, I know... it sounds far fetched. Every time I tell it, I get the same response. _Ha ha._

I have only eaten Farfetch'd twice since, and both times were delicious. The bird type was at one point in danger of extinction from over-eating, and even domestication has not led to its mass availability. It's an exquisite dish, usually served with leeks and onion sprigs as a gesture to its preferred nesting materials, and I can still remember the taste of the ginger drizzle with just a hint of orange.

Being the Phantom Lord of Lavender had its perks, but I shouldn't jump ahead.

But neither of those times compare with the experience of gnawing on an enormous, overcooked duck wing after near starvation on frozen Rattatta and trail rations.

We slept in a cave that evening and I built a fire, courtesy of my new best friend the fire dog. We were warm, we were full, and even though I didn't have my sleeping bag... it didn't matter – with the fire and a Growlithe pillow, I slept better than I had in weeks. I was the king of my two pokémon prefecture.

The next morning, as I stretched and iced the fire I instructed Pikachu and Growlithe that we needed to return to base. In that moment I realized I was something else as well. A prisoner.

Growlithe _roared_, a great gout of flame suddenly jumping in my path before Growlithe leaped forward, growling and pawing the snow. _Shit. _Pikachu started to summon a thundershock, but immediately let it fizzle out after a series of short, sharp barks directed at him. We shared a look – we'd make our break when we got the chance.

We never did.

This went on for three more days, Growlithe shepherding us forward. He brought us food, he gave us fire, and he made it perfectly clear that any escape attempts would end in our limbs being tossed around in the snow then quick roasted for good measure.

I expected all sorts of mean, nasty, horrible things to happen when we got to wherever Growlithe was leading us. What I did not expect was to come across a scene from a Christmas story – a well built, inviting log cabin in the woods, orange firelight filtering out through a window and a healthy smoke rising from a fat stone chimney in one corner. Along one wall was a giant pile of timber, and I noted with a start that the design of the cabin and its layout was identical to the Ranger station I had come across just before entering the wilds – that did not explain why such a place existed out here.

Growlithe let out a joyful bark once we came into the clearing itself, joyfully bounding up to the door then turning around, making sure to push us forward now. I tensed, hand wandering to my knife – this was going to be the inevitable showdown. Pikachu crouched next to me.

The door opened... and out stooped an old man, smiling at Growlithe and rubbing the pokémon's head before looking up at us, face solemn.

"I apologize for the surprise, but I can't go out in this weather any more. I hope Growlithe didn't cause you too much trouble... come in, come in!"

I'm sure you're expecting some Hansel and Gretle twist here, but it wasn't anything like that. The old man took us in, fed us, explaining that his Pidgeot had seen us months ago and he had kept an eye on our location, curious as to why a civilian had a pokémon, and how he seemed to be trying and able to evade the League. His intentions had been to leave us alone, but with the unexpected freeze he had sent out Growlithe.

That old man saved my life, taking me and Pikachu in like that – but what stayed with me was what happened throughout that winter and early spring, when destiny conspired to send me back out into the world. Never even told me his name – just called him 'sir' when I had to – yet he changed my life.

Up until now, my experience was that pokémon were designed to _function. _The Academy saw them as tools – valuable tools, tools that could be worth more than the soldier himself, but tools nonetheless. Pokémon did not work in teams, and trainers were not expected to empathize with their pokémon, beyond the need to understand them enough to control them. Pikachu and I had a different relationship beyond that due to having nobody else to watch one another's backs, and eventually gained a solid friendship in its own right, but I still on a fundamental level thought of a trainer and his pokémon as two distinct units in a pokémon battle.

The Old Man showed me differently. He had five pokémon – the aforementioned Growlithe and Pidgeot, as well as an absolutely enormous Machoke, an ancient Golum I only ever saw twice, assured it preferred its own company as it spend the winter doing little more than sleeping and eating dirt, and a Persian that seemed to be everywhere at once, always laying across whatever it was you needed to be doing.

None of them ever went into a pokéball.

"It's a tragedy, the balls they make these days," he grumbled once over dinner when I asked him about it, talking between bites of kimchi. "Look at it – _really _look at it. No mystery, no magic... just metal and micro-computers and billions of Kiy spent to reproduce what we already had. No workmanship, like there used to be."

"Used to be?" I'd asked, always insatiably curious when the Old Man talked about the past. He had endless stories of the Beforetime, when the League was just a corporation responsible for the games and when anyone could become a Trainer, traveling the world freely to capture and battle pokémon. He'd been a Ranger in those days, back when it simply meant working in the wilds and keeping the routes safe – which certainly explained his choice of home. Then the great massacres had occurred in the Silver Mountains and the League had wormed its way into power, guaranteeing safety with the arsenal of pokémon it could call to its defense. From there to today...

"When was that?" I asked.

He'd got up then, stooping over as he peered in a wooden cabinet in the corner of the room. Opening a drawer he pulled something out held tightly in his fist. He sat back down, an infectious grin on his face, like a child at Christmas.

"This", he said, unclenching his fist, "is an Apricorn ball, nature's own pokéball. They're not like the apricorns you know – these only grow further west... you can't move them, they refuse to grow out here – never have found out why, though it doesn't really matter. No electronic gizmos or Silph nonsense here. Just hours, _days_ of meticulous craftsmanship to harness the innate, natural power – the natural _spirit _of pokémon."

I was skeptical, it showed.

"Bah, kids these days," he grumbled. "I won't pretend to know how it works – maybe my own grandfather did, or maybe he just knew how to make them, and didn't worry about the why... who knows?" He asked sadly, face reminiscent. "They don't make them anymore, banned then forgotten. But work they _do. _You ask me, it's not something humans are supposed to know... the _magic_, maybe the power of the Old Gods – of Arcerus of the many-forms, connecting the bonds of Humanity, of Pokémon, inside a humble seed... nothing like those mechanical squareheads at _Silph_," he spat the word.

I was still at a loss. Nobody at the Academy ever mentioned apricorns that could catch a pokémon. "But if that", I gestured at the ball in his hand. "Can... you know, catch pokémon, why do pokéballs exist? Why do we manufacture them at all?" One thing the acquisition department had never been short on was pokéballs. They came by the ship load."

He snorted. "I was a boy when they introduced the pokéball – said they could do it better. This," he made a fist with the apricorn still inside, "won't catch a pokémon like a Silph ball can. You have to either exhaust the pokémon in battle so it's not strong enough to escape, it has to _accept_ it, it won't work otherwise. Even a pokémon who's 'caught' can't be voluntarily contained inside if it's strong and healthy. Course, it's not the talent curve that put the League off – the last thing they want anyway is every dumb kid running around with a Charizard or Victreebel. No, the biggest breakthrough was that the synthetic pokéballs can be linked together, transporting the Pokémon's 'code' through pokémon centers across the continent. You tag a trainer's pokéballs to limit him to six and it's awfully hard for him to outnumber you. And you can monitor every pokémon he has..." He trailed off in his rambling, as I was no longer listening, trying to wrap my mind around it all.

"So in a way... the League was right? If apricorns can't hold an army and don't allow transpiration, How could you possibly keep or move a battalion of Beedrill-"

"There _were _no battalions," he hissed, voice hushed but passionate. "_That's _what you don't understand. Pokémon weren't just beasts or soldiers, they were part of us. We've lost that, and those damned mechanical pokéballs hold a good bit of the blame."

"The trust of a pokémon, to have it fight on your behalf, has to be _earned." _He nodded at my lap. "Like that."

I looked down. Without even noticing Pikachu had crawled into my lap, and I'd been unconsciously scratching a spot just behind his left ear that he enjoyed, Pikachu's little chest rising up and down slowly in relaxed contentment.

"Growlithe told me that Pikachu was prepared to battle it to protect you, and it took Growlithe explaining that you'd be charcoal before it got off a thunder shock for it to back down and follow. Even then, Pikachu stayed with you even when you were sure you were walking into a trap, didn't it?"

All true, but... "the _Birds! _You can talk to pokémon!"

He stared at me for a minute, before bursting out in his croaky, wheezing laugh. "No... of course not. That's ridiculous. But there are ways to communicate beyond words, and only a damned fool would conclude that pokémon are just animals. We might call them dogs or cats or fish _types, _but they're clearly not dogs or cats or fish. It's a human description, not a pokémon one."

I nodded, more accepting that he was saying something that that I agreed with it all... it was a lot to think about.

"You still think I'm an old man off his rocker. Well, you aren't going anywhere in this weather. You stay here – I could use a young lad like you to help around here – and in the spring when the pokémon come back in force I'll show you who's right."

Which is how in early spring when the river was rapid with melting snow, I found myself out in the woods with the old man, staring down a Weedle.

"Now pay attention," the old man said, holding his bright green apriball in front of him. "A Weedle like that, even an apriball can catch without any particular trouble, but we want to get this right – I don't need Growlithe having to take out a Beedrill swarm because you're only half paying attention and Weedle starts shrieking when you manage to mangle the catch. Thumb here, see? Throw hard, but not at the loss of accuracy – you wanna hit the guy square in the chest. Don't spin it too much either – the center line's has to make contact with skin, or you're going to fail like a Horsea in the desert every single time, you understand?

I nodded, eyes still focused on the Weedle. The old man kept on, but I'd heard this lesson countless times over the winter, the story of how he captured Geodude a particular favorite of his, with all the details of his perfect throw. I had only held one of his apriballs twice, but I could recite proper grip down pat, gospel and verse.

But I am, and always will be, a man who learns by _doing._

I held the Apriball in my left hand. Brushing the surface with my fingertips. Fingerless gloves, courtesy of the old man, who insisted on being able to always _feel_ one's balls. Hurr hurr.

Nervously, I pulled at my hairline, tugging back my cap with the other hand, eyes never leaving the Weedle, obliviously eating a shrub. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Pikachu, also focused on the Weedle, ready to volt the bug should I fail and find myself in danger of receiving a full dose of its needle's venom.

Thumb on the indentation, careful not to push too hard or too softly on the ancient handiwork. Arm back. Slight flick of the wrist on the release to generate a lateral spin... so much more needlessly complicated than the Aim-and-Shoot of an Academy Pokéball.

I realized at that moment I didn't _really _think this was going to work, that the old man was half mad and so lonely by himself in the woods he was just looking to have a laugh at some dumb rube's expense. That explains my complete shock when the apriball hit Weedle smack in the face, and the bugtype only got out a highpitched "_Wheee!" _before disappearing into the apriball in a flash of white light.

I just stared, like a grade A Slowbro it was at least a full five seconds before I managed to bother to close my mouth and blink.

Pikachu wasn't any better.

Clapping brought me out of my reverie. "Not bad," the old man chuckled. He went over and picked up the pokéball which had at last stopped twitching – took longer than a pokéball, I finally noticed. He came over to me, holding the ball in my face.

"No magnetic coating so none of the modern anti-theft, anti-loss safety systems on modern pokébelts are worth a lick of good. Course, if your pokémon gets lost or stolen, in one of these it can just get out and come home, so there you go. What you need is a good leather belt, never want to put a full one in your pocket, people get crushed that way..."

He chuckled, "Sorry, carried away. Now watch. You can squeeze it like this," he pressed the ball into his palm with four fingers, "to get a similar effect to what you kids call a carrier ball. But it's not automatic. You push up _here_ to get it back to its full size and when you want to release...  
He tapped the ball hard twice in rapid succession and a white light shot out, Weedle once again appearing before us, some ten yards out.

"Now again. A Wild Weedle appears..."

I was a believer after that. I learned a lot from that old man. We talked about pokémon. About the Beforetimes. About my time at the Academy. About Blue.

Like I said, I haven't seen Blue in years, and I doubt he thinks of me beyond that dumbass from the Academy who couldn't hack the thought of a dead Pikachu. But he's still my rival, that slightly older boy from Pallet who became the best to every come out of the Academy. Remember, around this time Blue had already made a name for himself and was getting ready to take over Dragon Squad. I still was alone with Pikachu and spending my time with Weedles on a catch-and-release basis.

So in a way, Old Man made _me_ a perfect rival for _him. _Gary Oak prizing strength and function of his pokémon combined with his own brand of genius – a perfect archetype of the League's ideal warrior. And me, discovering the value of working with pokémon to form a single, organic entity even in the heat of battle, learning far too much, far too quickly because outside events demanded it from an old time exile who had made his home in the wilderness rather than give up the life and friends he loved. Has heroic epic written all over it, doesn't it?

My anger had always been unfocused – lashing out at what I felt was great personal injustice in my life, but without ever arriving at a solution except to escape into nomansland. From the Academy. From Viridian. Now though, I was gaining a sharpened edge, a desire to actively fight against the League. I'm sure that old man knew exactly what he was doing when he shared his stories from the past, showed me those black-and-white images of the old Championships... of Lance, his face frozen in grim satisfaction as Gyardos had 'run the types' against the reigning champion. Contrasted with Lance ten years later, that same Gyarados turned on the crowd during a bread riot in Celadon, only this time their faces were not cheering some league idol...

Yeah, I wasn't a fan of the League when I escaped the Academy or when I fled Viridian, but I hadn't been ready to actively fight them, either. I still wasn't – that turning point would be personal.

That spring, events caught up with me. With shit hitting the fan when it did, I've since closed the gap with Blue considerably.

The old man of course knew what was coming. With the spring thaw, the League was once more throwing its full and considerable weight into connecting Viridian and Pewter by land. No doubt Pidgeot was giving him updates every day. What he didn't do was tell me, not till it was too late.

I'd woken up at with the sun as usual, wrapping up my since-recovered sleeping bag (courtesy of a winter's flight by Pidgeot) and putting away the futon the old man had somehow acquired for me. I'd planned to take care of the morning chores – the chickens, feed Growlith, static-comb Pikachu until breakfast. Instead, the old man was already outside when I opened the door, just standing there, waiting for me.

"It wasn't an accident I brought you here," he stated without invitation, smiling sadly. "And by Arcerus, I don't think it was an accident you were in those woods for me to bring you here... but who knows," he gave a heavy shrug. "But here you are, and it's time for you to decide what you're going to do, what you're future is. You leave today."

I was stung, my face clearly showing that as my brain desperately trying to figure out what I'd done to offend him. I'd been affected deeply by a man whose name I didn't know – a name I still don't know – a man who was what I remembered family was supposed to be like, a feeling I hadn't had since that last summer's day when I was ten.

He shook his head, pointing southward through the woods. "There's a team of Rangers in there, scouting for the road crews... they're going to succeed this time, they're going to tame these lands, much as it pains to say. Pidgeot's kept an eye on them - they've been following the river, and last night they camped three miles downstream. They'll find us today."

"So, what?" I replied, shaken. "I can hide – go away for a week or two. It'll be fine."

He shook his head, laughing sadly. "An old man in the woods, living like this? That alone would bring questions... but just think with that head of yours for a minute. What are they going to do when they see Growlithe or Persian. Or Machoke... _especially _Machoke?"

"Then come with me!" I shouted, angry in despair. But my heart was already sinking, especially when he mentioned the pokémon. This was no longer about me leaving – I had almost been killed for having a near feral Pikachu. He had more firepower than most soldiers, and I suspected that in his case, the total was even stronger than the sum of its parts.

"If I'm lucky, they'll arrest me, kill my pokémon, torch my home, and then mark the spot on their map as a convenient location for a Ranger Station. Look at me, _look at me!_" I did. I refer to him as old man, but I didn't really take it in, but he was. He had that wheeze in his voice. He stooped, he was slow and for his strength, it was a relative one – clearly degraded from his youth.

"It's not home if it's not worth fighting for. This is my home. But it's not yours."

It was his face, his eyes that did it. He was finished, I understood.

"The weather looks promising, you could do worse," he continued as if we were planning a picnic. "Go in and pack your stuff – quickly now – and get yourself together. I have a few things for you, a few things from when I was a Ranger. That jacket of yours, for starters...they don't make jackets like they used to..." he shook his head in disgust, and I followed him back into the house.

It didn't take long to be ready – I basically lived out my pack anyway. I wasn't sure what to do – conversation seemed trite. But thankfully, he understood too.

"Eight – all I have left. Take care of them." He clasped my hands, and I felt the now familiar texture of the apriballs slipped into my hands, thumb now naturally searching for an indentation.

"Last of my family's... probably last in Kanto you know," he said wistfully. "Whatever you decide to do, Ash, you'll at least have the ability to do it. Do not lose them." He finished solemnly. I nodded – opening my hands to look at the tiny balls, each worth to me than a Cloyster pearl three times the size.

"When they come, I'm not going to give them time to order me around," he said and I nodded, remembering my own encounter with the Bug Catchers. "So you need to get out and go. Don't come and help – I have a plan for my big finish and if you show up and get in the way, I will kill myself just for the pleasure of becoming a ghost and haunting you forever, do you understand?"

I swear, it was so precise a command, so authoritative, it was only at the last second I caught myself and didn't respond "Yes, Command Leader!"

I ran far enough away to watch the battle and really I'm not ashamed that I stayed out of sight. The League was declaring the Viridian wilds as its own, and the scouts proved it. A squad of Rangers, backed by two skirmisher groups flying the Grey Banner. It would have been a greater dishonor to have fought against orders in an unwinnable battle and thrown away any future shot at vengeance.

Still hurt, though.

I stopped fearing the League that day. I have – still do – a healthy respect for the fighting capabilities of the Banners, and I've seen enough gladiator matches to know the power of individual trainers. Training has intensified in these last years as war stopped being a danger to bludgeon the populace into submission with and became a real danger for the Banners... but fear, no?

True, one old man put up one hell of a fight given he was outnumbered forty to one. But what destroyed _fear_ was that he was willing to fight in the first place.

I heard rather than saw most of the fight from across the river, safely hidden in an elevated rock cropping at the edge of a dense copse, a couple of hundred yards from the old man's compound itself. Right up until I heard Golem come literally bowling down the hillside at full roar.

As expected, the Rangers approached warily, and one of them had a bullhorn and ordered anyone in the home to come out and be counted, the skirmishers unleashing a horde of Butterfree as he did so. I nodded, expecting this: Butterfree are very obedient and don't spook – good recon pokémon and excellent for wide degree of area control with carefully controlled toxin blends.

What the Rangers didn't expect was for a line of Butterfree to be scorched out of the sky by Growlithe, or Pidgeot to swoop down among the survivors when they tried to realign against the new threat.

It was amazing, watching pokémon work _together. _The League doesn't do that – pokémon may be on the same side but it's purely a technicality, Pokémon on the army scale simply cannot be trained to protect one another, to feint or support. At most, humans can intervene so as to order commands that give some sort of semblance that this is going on, but I was experiencing a first hand lesson in the difference between mimicry and reality.

The rest of the battle is lost in the fog of war. I was in the forest too, so I heard sound, but its location echoed around me. I saw the flock of butterfree through the trees, but I could not see individual fights. Best I can recall Growlithe and Pidgeotto played havoc on the Butterfree, wiping them out before the Skirmishers caught up with another release.

I heard Growlithe roar in agony – I assume there were now water types in the battle, and the crack of thunder gave warning to some electrical type – Electabuzz, though that's purely a guess on my part. At some point I thought that despite everything the old man was going to win – Machoke came storming through the woods, and one of the two squadrons of skirmishers rushed backwards, some even going so far as scrambling right down the river bank, not even fifty yards from where I lay, watching and cheering silently. Some battle-hardened sergeant must have been among them – boys I realized for the first time that were no older than I – because Machoke suddenly turned away, throwing down the body of a skirmisher like a ragdoll to take on a Dodrio that had appeared on the bank. It was the only battle I got a really good view of, and it was beautiful, both pokémon attacking too quickly for the human eye to capture, dodging on pure instinct. Machoke finally managed to grab the center head by its long scrawny neck, and with all the strength in those brawny blue legs kicked off, executing a perfect Seismic Toss.

Machoke would have won, but then came a highpitched whistle and I knew what was coming next, feeling dread pull through me. _The Frenzy_, a long honored traditional counter for an army trying to rebound from chaos. Like mushrooms, Raticate began appearing. Without joltpikes to direct them, Raticate make terrible troops _en force._ But throw them into a pitched battle, where the stink of adrenaline and sweat and fear already drench the field and you don't particularly care who they go after? Party time.

Machoke should have gone down then, swarmed by two dozen Raticate while fending off the giant bird type that still wasn't down for the count. Pikachu let out a cry of anguish, and we came very close to joining battle then, emotions overruling logic. But with the calm demeanor and perfect execution of an honor squadron on parade, Machoke began a quick march backwards, Persian suddenly appearing at his side in a fit of Fury Swipes and the two pulled a fighting retreat back towards the battle heating up at the compound.

I knew then that it would do no good – that even in a perfectly executed retreat they would reach the compound and have no where else to go, we were all minutes away from witnessing the gruesome spectacle of what was explained to us at the Academy as Ratrage: the one and only reason you'll ever need to never lose your joltpike. Once there were enough dead bodies – a very low threshold for a swarm of Raticate – panic would fight with the instinct to protect such a rich food source, leading to an enormous homoronal overdrive within the Raticates' brain that would drive in into a total blood frenzy, exhausting themselves in the end but reigning destruction on any living thing around them until they collapsed. The pitch of battle grew louder even as it moved further away, back to the compound, and I knew that the Rage was upon us.

Roll Out into the carnage, Golem. Literally. It came rolling down the hillside, young growth being snapped like toothpicks as it barreled forward. The Rangers panicked when they saw it, but the skirmishers held firm – a remarkable turnaround after the almost-rout when dealing with Machoke. I didn't see who – though given the League's preferrences I would assume a Blastoise – launched a Hydro Pump, but Golem simply turned slightly, chunks of rock flying from its body as it let out a bellowing roar in pain and anger but avoiding a direct hit, continuing forward at dizzying speed.

I don't know if Golem ever bothered to stop, of if he simply let loose his attack as he rolled by.

Golem _Exploded._

I was thrown backwards painfully into a pillar of rock by the shock alone, even protected by the woodlands and I was several hundred yards away from the epicenter. I can't imagine anyone survived the attack. To be honest, I don't even know if the old man was still alive by then anyway.

I sat there for ten minutes waiting for my head to stop threatening to fall off my shoulders and into my lap – a development which would have at least had the upshot of getting rid of the bruise blossoming on the back of my head where it had smacked on the rock. As soon as my legs were capable, I stood up, surveying the significantly less tree covered bit of earth across the river, though otherwise blocked from view by an enormous dust cloud. I sat back down, shocked.

There was no doubt that that boom had been heard by whatever reserve the Rangers had left at basecamp. Rangers – very, very warily – would be heading this way. It was time to go. Not that there was anything holding me here any more – everything left that I cared about now a crater.

I looked at Pikachu, dazedly find his legs long enough to flop into my lap. My hands instinctively petted his flank, and I noted they wet and dirty.

That old man showed me more love and kindness that I had received since leaving my mother's home at the end of a rope, and had given me the drive for a future then sacrificed himself for his home and friends. There is no shame in admitting that I wept. Tears, dirt, and blood on my hands – very well.

I had a mission now. I am not a political mastermind, and had no fantasies of being King, let alone a good and wise one. But I knew that the League had to go – I had spent too long running from it, three times now, not including being literally press-ganged into League service. There would be no more running. I was going to take the league down – not for any high aspiration or promises of rulerships, but so that the next time I too found a home, I wouldn't have to die to keep it.

The League though, as I had just witnessed, was not some invincible, faceless, force. Everyone thinks of Indigo Chateau as the power of the League, but the day to day grind is run by the Banners and the Gyms. I'd been a part of that system – I'd had the overall ideas drummed into my skull. So that's where I'd start. As I continued to walk away, weeks of half-considered plots and stray ideas began to solidify into a plan. Without the gyms, Kanto was reduced to militarized city-states. The Banners, deliberately designed to be in conflict with one another, all drafted from across the region, creating ranks of armed men with no allegiance but to their banner and no dependency but upon the League. It was a fragile system, bound together by fear of any other group gaining power and so preferring the status quo.

Okay, as I came to discover it's a bit more complicated than that, but you can appreciate that it's a working model of how the country gets by.

My fingers dipped into my pocket, shuffling through the apriballs, ghosting over them until I found the familiar grain of the one I'd used time and time again now. All the balls empty, but all full of potential.

It would take a few more days to work out enough of the details to credibly claim I had a 'plan', but I did have a general idea of what I needed to do.

Take out the League's ability to operate across the continent. Kill the gym leaderships if possible. Eight stops on my own personal Pokemon Circuit.

And catch pokémon. I was definitely going to need some pokémon. Something better than Weedles.

I was just barely seventeen when the Rangers came and the old man took them all down. Blue was already a household name within Blue Banner, and that reputation was only going to continue rising. Needless to say that this was the greatest gap between us, I've gained ground since I came up with a mission to follow. The first nationwide broadcast offering a reward for my arrest occurred just a few months later, after the unfortunate clusterfuck of events that have gone down in the books as the Sacking of Pewter.

But anyway, that's the story of how I got the hat.

* * *

Bug catchers: A derogatory term for the Kanto Secret Police, called such on the basis that they are responsible for catching 'pests'. Adding to the strength of the comparison is a tendency to use bug pokémon due to their effectiveness in the enclosed fighting spaces of civilian homes where most such arrests are made, and their wide variety of disabling attacks and toxins, in particularly _String Shot _and _Sleep Powder_. It should be noted that due to rationing of battle ready pokémon, Bug catchers are very low priorities, as their primary charges are the capture and interrogation of civilians, most of whom are expected to have little fighting experience and no combat capable pokémon.

'Run the types': A feat in which a single pokémon utilizes five or more distinct attack types in a single battle. The accomplishment and the term itself have existed for centuries, but were popularized when young and rising star of the Pokémon League, Lance Wataru, made it the cornerstone of his battles, earning him enormous popular prestige and enthusiasm. Most famously, his Gyarados dethroned the previous Champion's Khangaskhan with a dazzling combination of ice, electric, fire, dragon, and water attacks. Though Lance's victories are the most famous modern examples of running the types, today visitors willing to spend the Kiy to do so can witness incredible choreographed runs at the Cerulean gym, though hardcore Circuit fans take issue with many elements of the run (most obviously, Starmie's Flame Wheel Finale) being psychic projections imposed on the audience and so not 'true' runs. Nonetheless, the act draws thousands of tourists a year dispute the cost.


End file.
